The firm's 1,500 employees have committed themselves to a doctrine of radical transparency and brutal honesty. Nearly every meeting large or small is taped and anyone relevant to the discussion is allowed to go back and watch the meeting.

He told me that it was clear I hadn't read an essential Harvard Business Review article about his company or watched his 2014 interview with the New York Times' Andrew Ross Sorkin. Not doing so meant I was wasting his time, mine and the time of readers/viewers/the crew, etc.

A few hours later, I started to process the meeting a little bit differently. I realized that Dalio had provided me a gift. He had opened the doors to the kind of discussion that might put others ill-at-ease. In most interviews, you want to walk a fine line: pressing but not hammering; asking but not attacking. Dalio demanded honesty of himself just as much as of those around him. He had opened the door to an interview where we could skip the niceties and get right to the tough questions.